The EU-Russia relationship is caught up in a vicious circle of mutually decreasing expectations. On the Russian side, growing contempt towards the EU and its institutions can be detected. And in some transatlantic circles, voices are now heard suggesting that the EU should downgrade its ambitions to build a partnership based on shared values and principles, settling instead for the cultivation of a pragmatic policy based on a commonality of certain key interests.

As an EU strategy, this does not bear serious scrutiny. The EU is not like the US, which can afford to concentrate on a narrow set of strategic issues with Moscow. Geographical proximity and growing interdependence are simply too pressing for the Union to remain indifferent about the future trajectory of Russia.

Just because the expectations of Russia’s essential willingness to follow a liberal path have been exposed as a chimera, not all the principles underlying the Union’s policy on Russia should be discarded as flawed. In fact, the reverse case can also be made.

The expectations of rapid Russian convergence with Western ideals may have been overly optimistic. But democracy, rule of law, good governance, respect for human and minority rights and liberal market principles are all factors that are badly needed to ensure a stable and prosperous future for Russia.

The sustainability of Russia’s economic, political and social success depends on reforms that will at the same time guide the country back towards the path of convergence with key liberal principles. In this process the EU is the only agent of modernisation that is both capable of and interested in helping Russia to succeed.

At the same time the EU should, through its own actions, show that it deserves respect and needs to be taken seriously by Moscow. It should start by firm action in the energy sector, which seems to be the key to the current relationship. Here a clear change in the way the Union does its business is required.

The current situation only plays to Russia’s strengths. But by pursuing a unified internal energy market and subsequently a common external energy policy, the EU could force Russia to deal more at the Union level instead of making deals with individual member states. By exposing Russia to more market forces in the energy field, the EU would be able to diminish the scope for the Kremlin to use energy as a political weapon. This would ease at a stroke the EU’s concern over growing dependence on Russian resources, paving the way for a reciprocal and mutually beneficial relationship in the field of energy.

But a successful EU-Russia relationship should extend far beyond the energy question. The Union should insist on a certain baseline of liberal values in its exchanges with Russia, refusing to condone any Russian shirking of commitments on matters of principle, no matter how difficult the issue.

This does not imply that the EU should go on the offensive towards Russia. Instead, a more moderate and essentially conservative stance is required. The Union should avoid steps that would reduce drastically its scope for interaction with Russia in the future. But it should not rush into a new agreement with Russia, to replace the expiring partnership and co-operation agreement, if this does no more than codify the current mood of pessimism. In any case, the question of a new agreement is far from pressing: the current agreements and documents adopted by the parties provide them with ample scope to take the relationship forward in a mutually beneficial way.

Hiski Haukkala is a researcher at the Finnish Institute of International Affairs.